Sari Botton - Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York

ALSO EDITED BY SARI BOTTON

Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

Gallery Books

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Copyright 2014 by Sari Botton

Previously published on 2014 by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

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This Gallery Books trade paperback edition November 2019

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The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon appears with permission from the author, Elizabeth Gilbert. It originally appeared in the March 1997 issue of GQ and was later the basis for the motion picture Coyote Ugly.

Royalty appears with permission from the author, Susan Orlean. It originally appeared in the September 1990 issue of the New Yorker.

Interior design by Akasha Archer

Interior illustrations Shutterstock

Cover design by Marlyn Dantes

About the cover: The front cover illustration was drawn by artist James Gulliver Hancock (jamesgulliverhancock.com), whose distinctive work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide. His book, All the Buildings in New York , features drawings of iconic and everyday buildings in New York, from the Flatiron and Rockefeller Center to the brownstones of Brooklyn. He lives and works in both Sydney and New York.

ISBN 978-1-4767-8440-3

ISBN 978-1-4767-8443-4 (ebook)

For Maggie Estep (19632014), a fearless great talent, an inspiration, a badassand a testament to the possibility of remaining a true New Yorker long after youve left.

I d like to begin by making one thing indisputably clear: I love New York City. I am so crazy in love with it, so excited on the occasions when I get to return to it from my home upstate, even just for brief work-related appointments on frigid winter afternoons, that I almost cant see straight.

I wanted to get that out of the way because theres been a bit of confusion about my stance on the city. To some degree, Ive put together this collection of essays by some of my favorite authors about their love for New York City to clear up that confusion.

Heres the backstory. In 2013, I edited Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York , an anthology of essays by twenty-eight women writers, all paying homage to Joan Didions iconic 1967 essay about quitting the city at twenty-eight. The book was published that October, which turned out to be an interesting time for it to appear.

To begin with, billionaire mayor Michael Bloombergs twelve-year tenure was coming to a close, capping more than a decade in which the quality of life in New York City was on the upswing, as was the cost of living there. The city was cleaner and safer than ever before, making it an even greater draw for those at the higher end of the economic spectrum. Over the course of Bloombergs three terms in office, real estate prices soared at record rates. According to a recent report by the New York City comptrollers office, since 2000, median rents have risen 75 percent while median incomes have decreased by 5 percent. Thats made it unaffordable for many to stay, especially those struggling to make it in creative fields (myself included). Not to mention artist-friendly shops, bars, and restaurants. For the past several years, just about every morning Ive been greeted by an outraged post or two in my Facebook feed about one haunt or another having to shut its doors, being replaced by a Chase, a Starbucks, a Duane Reade, often on the ground floor of a new, gleaming glass tower. CBGBs, Life Caf, Mars Bar, Miladys Pub, Roseland Ballroom, Pearl Paint, Bereket... the list goes on.

Calling attention to thisand doing so just one day before my books pub datewas an op-ed published in the Guardian by iconic New Yorker David Byrne (best known as a member of the rock band Talking Heads but also a painter, photographer, and author) warning that if the city became so unaffordable for artists that most of them left, hed be joining them. If the 1% stifles New Yorks creative talent, he wrote, Im out of here. He was echoing fellow musician Patti Smith, who in a 2010 Q&A at Cooper Union told author Jonathan Lethem, New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling.... New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city. She recommended a few, including Detroit and Poughkeepsie.

Shortly after Byrnes op-ed was published, blogger Andrew Sullivan announced that after a bit more than a year of living in New York, hed be returning to Washington. I loved New York City with a passion until I tried to live here, he wrote in a blog post accompanied by a video of Kermit the Frog singing LCD Soundsystems 2007 song New York I Love You, But Youre Bringing Me Down. (Sample lyric: Your mild billionaire mayors now convinced hes a king...)

Byrnes and Sullivans declarations struck a nerve, and so did the book, which became an instant hit. Many identified with either the impetus or the need to leave New York. Some others, though, felt affronted, as if Byrne, Sullivan, and the twenty-eight authors in my book had issued a joint proclamation that the city they loved was over and ordered a mass exodus.

In the case of Goodbye to All That , nothing could have been further from the truth. But there were some people who hadnt picked up the book, who assumed, because of the title, that it contained twenty-eight anti-city screeds. They didnt know that it was (with the exception of a few essays) more like a collection of love letters to New York City, including one from me.

They didnt know that I intended for the book to be about what it means to people to leave the most exciting but also most challenging city in the worldthe idea of leaving it, which I believe every New Yorker considers at one difficult moment or another, or when tempting opportunities arise elsewhere. Which is why I included essays by several women who had either returned to New York after leaving for a whileas Didion ultimately didor whod decided in the end that it was better not to leave at all. I even included one by an author whos never lived thereRoxane Gaywho decided that, despite a childhood fascination with the city, she was meant to love it from a distance, as an occasional visitor.

Although the people who assumed I was dissing the city seemed to be very much in the minority, I was troubled by the idea that anyone might have gotten that impression, because I am besotted with New York and always have been.